From: info <info-AT-j12.org>
Subject: AUT: Falling rate of profit?
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 15:45:50 +0100



Someone off list wrote:
> > From a marxist viewpoint, fundamental capitalist
> > crisis - eg the 30s
> > Depression and the new
> > depression which opened in the 70s and has never
> > really been solved
> > since - result from the falling rate of profit.  Far
> > from the rate of
> > profit falling due to workers' wages rising - as
> > capitalists claimed
> > (and as some autonomists seem to claim as well) -
> > its fall indicated an
> > inherent tendency in the capitalist system.  As the
> > ratio of constant
> > capital to variable capital rises, the rate of
> > profit declines because
> > only variable capital (labour-power) produces new
> > value.


Harry replied:
This is old-line Marxist dogma. Some orthodox marxists cleave to the
"tendency of the rate of profit to fall" some to "underconsumption"
theories, some to other mono-causal theories. None have been able to read
these theories in class terms and their dogma is boring and useless. If
you want more see the long article I wrote years ago with Peter Bell
published in Research in Political Economy on how to reread these theories
in class terms.

My imaginary friend replied:
Not only that but the falling rate of profit is only tendential. There are 
ways it can be counteracted: e.g. by reducing the production cycle. e.g. if 
a shipbuilder employs two shifts instead of one and completes the 
production of a ship in half the time, and thus receives the profit in half 
the time, they have doubled the rate of profit although the absolute profit 
has remained unaltered. Other techniques can involve the use of new 
technologies, just-in-time etc. . . . All these serve to intensify the 
process of exploitation and are characteristic of the real domination of 
capital.

Fabian


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